Invalidating Users (temporarily)

[John F Haugh II]

In article <1991Jun21.163259.6777 at unlinfo.unl.edu> james at engrss2.unl.edu (James Nau) writes:
>Does anyone know of a way to invalidate a user so that a message is
>displayed, and the user is logged off, and ftp access is disabled?
>I've tried replacing the shell with a program that prints out a
>message.  Worked great.  But that still allowed FTP access to the account.

There is a file, /etc/shells, which lists the shells which a user may
have and be granted FTP access.  The /etc/shells file was replaced by
the "shells" attribute in /etc/security/login.cfg and I suspect the
people in TCP/IP didn't get the message.

>The only alternative that I can see is to either a) change the password
>on the account, or b) mark that password in /etc/passwd to be a "*".
>Both of these will disable the account, but won't allow a message to be
>printed.

Create the file /etc/shells and add the names of the valid login shells
on separate lines.  Your program shouldn't be listed, nor should the UUCP
and other "special" commands.
-- 
John F. Haugh II        | Distribution to  | UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
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